comedy

AA – Antiques Anonymous

/ jadorgan / Leave a comment

AA – Antiques Anonymous

I had the urge to make the five-hour trip to see my friend Sue in Massachusetts. A combination of lifelong familiarity and Sue’s endearing quirkiness would be the panacea for my pandemic woes. I arrived on a Thursday at about noon, and Sue, her husband Feller, and I spent two hours sitting at their kitchen table catching up on a year-and-a-half of separation. Over fried clams and beer, Sue casually mentioned that she had a new addiction – online auctions.

“Oh, like eBay?” I asked.

“Not quite…”

I soon discovered how serious her latest obsession had become. She took me on a tour of the house to show off her most recent acquisitions. Two new (read ‘new to Sue’) hutches had been obtained to display a recent haul of blue and white Staffordshire China and ruby Depression glass. Her collection of folk-art wooden horses, both of the statue and rocking form, had expanded into every room. There were antique framed pictures, mainly of nearby landscapes, and books on local history.

“I’ve picked up some furniture along the way,” she told me, nodding toward her family room crammed row after row like a wholesaler. “Great prices. I’ll give some away. Or, after I’ve cleaned it up, maybe I could sell it for a profit.”

I nodded along in amazement at the volume of what she had collected.

“Oh, by the way,” Sue said offhandedly, “I have a quick appointment tomorrow morning at 10. You don’t have to go if you don’t want.”

“Appointment?”

“To pick up a couple of things I won.”

“An online auction, I presume. What did you win?”

“A dining room table and chairs,” she said, “and a stack of 1960s teen magazines. It’ll be fast. In and out. Feller will take me in his pickup truck.”

Shrugging, I agreed that it would be fun to tag along.

We set out the next morning equipped with a roll of heavy plastic, a spool of shrink wrap, and masking tape. When we arrived at the house – a mid-1800s building reminiscent of the Little House on the Prairie era general store/post office with adjacent living quarters – the place was abuzz with other happy auction winners.

Sue introduced herself to a man with a clipboard who appeared to be in charge. He pushed reading glasses onto his nose and scanned the list in his hand.

“Ah, yes!” He nodded vigorously. “Here’s your dining room table and chairs. Here’s your stack of magazines.”

Feller and I were already moving toward the magazines with shrink wrap when the auctioneer added, “And here’s the kitchen.” Feller and I paused.

“The kitchen?” Sue asked in a voice designed to convey doubt, or forgetfulness, or bewilderment. Feller and I weren’t fooled. “What in the kitchen did I win? I can’t remember.”

“Why, the whole thing!” The auctioneer told her. “It’s lot number…” he tipped his head back slightly to peer through his glasses at the list on his clipboard, “twelve.”

“Oh!” Sue exclaimed, then chuckled nervously. “What exactly does that include?”

The auctioneer took off his glasses. “Everything. Except for the major appliances, everything is yours. But” he stopped next to a lower cabinet, “you don’t need to take anything from here. It’s all food, and the mice have gotten into it. You can leave that.”

As the auctioneer left the room, Feller and I spun around to stare at Sue wordlessly. She hemmed and hawed, avoiding our eyes as she scanned the countertops and above the cabinets, all jam-packed with stuff. Then we noticed the adjoining pantry.

“Is this ours too?” I called out to the auctioneer.

“It is indeed!”

I swear I could hear him laughing to himself.

“Sue, you brought boxes, right?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I forgot about the kitchen.”

“Forgot?! How much did you pay for it?”

“Sixteen dollars.” She eyed me apprehensively. “The microwave and coffee maker alone should pay for it?”

We started by wrapping the plastic around the dining room furniture and magazines, then hauling them through the rain to the truck. For the next two hours, we went through the cabinets and drawers containing the late owner’s lifetime collection of glasses, dish sets, utensils, serving platters, salt and pepper shakers, flour and sugar canisters, colorful bowls, ceramic vases, pitchers and jars and plastic containers, recipe boxes, cooking tools, and on and on. We found a stack of about fifty dish towels and used them to wrap and protect the breakables. Pulling wire baskets from the walls, we packed them with odds and ends. We shrink-wrapped stacks of dinnerware and glasses and cups in an effort to keep them safe during transport.

Every object in that kitchen was coated with a layer of slimy grease, and mouse poop was everywhere. On the counters, in the cabinets, on the floor, on plates, inside of mugs. Repeatedly, we’d find ourselves gagging at the thought of what we were touching, then following it up with copious globs of the hand sanitizer from my purse. We carried load after load from the house to the truck, drenched with sweat and rain.

I pulled a porcelain platter from a cabinet and showed it to Sue. “This is worthless, Sue. See where it was broken, then glued back together? It needs to go in the garbage.” I looked around for such a thing.

“Uh, er, um, I think it’s pretty!” She grabbed it from me to wrap in towels.

“Sue! It’s junk!”

She lowered her voice. “We have to take it. That’s part of the contract when you win a lot in a house. You have to take everything.”

That’s when it dawned on me. The sheer brilliance of this operation. Sue had paid $16 for the honor of cleaning out an entire room packed mainly with rubbish. The auctioneer had gotten her, and others who had bid on full room lots, to pay him to clean out nearly 100 years’ worth of accumulation. I could only imagine what it would have cost if he’d hired 1-800-GOT-JUNK to remove it.

When I pointed out the reality of the hustle, she nodded in acknowledgment. “I know, I know. Never again! This has absolutely cured me – CURED me – of my online auction addiction. I’m cured!”

Feller looked dubious. I thought about the time when Sue and I were teens, stranded at the drive-in with a dead car battery. She was so rattled that she swore she’d never go to another drive-in movie for the rest of her life. Two weeks later, we saw The Omen at, you guessed it, the drive-in. Then there was the time she’d promised her husband that she’d stop buying goldfish for their outside pond. The next day, she came home with two more because it was a breed they didn’t have yet. 

“I swear! No more,” she added emphatically. “I’m cured!”

The following day, before I headed out to visit my brother in Boston, Sue and I drove around all of our favorite hangouts from our teenage years. We ended at a country store that has existed since her father was a boy. At the entrance, I was transfixed by the smell of cinnamon and apples from the day’s baking. Sue, however, made a beeline for the vintage goods offered on consignment by local residents.

“Look at these plates!” She snatched one from a stack of eight beautiful, flowered plates with birds on them. Seeing the expression on my face, she added, “I’m not getting them. But they’re pretty.”

“I thought you were cured,” I teased her.

“I am! I am! I’m only admiring them.” She continued to admire them for five minutes, picking them up, turning them over, studying the backstamps, muttering under her breath.

Even as we were leaving with our haul of old-fashioned candies and jugs of maple syrup, Sue’s eyes kept returning to the plates. “How much are they?” she asked the cashier, knowing perfectly well they were marked as $22 for the stack of eight. “No, no. I can’t justify it. I have so many I don’t know where I’d put them. See, I’m cured!” she insisted, trying to convince herself.

We said our goodbyes, and I set out for my brother’s house. When I reached my destination, I had a new text from Sue. It was a picture of the plates with one sentence: “I broke down…”

* * * * *

Virtually Reality

/ jadorgan / 2 Comments

I tossed and turned much of the night, thoughts racing about everything I needed to do in the morning. Would I be able to sleep if I made a To-Do list instead of worrying that I might forget an important task? My nearly sixty-year-old hands were semi-frozen into arthritic claws from yesterday’s hard work and would require a session of finger-yoga before agile enough to grip a pen or make a note in my smartphone. Better to hope my equally old memory could retain every detail on the growing index of tasks. So, I continued to toss and turn.

Upon awakening, I worked at limbering my hands, particularly my thumbs, by opening and closing, clenching and flexing. Mentally running through my chores, I was satisfied that nothing appeared to have fallen off the agenda. It was time to attack my jam-packed schedule.

I needed to design a garden, buy the flowers and shrubs, then get everything planted. There were shells to collect, bugs to catch, and high-value fish to find. I needed to shop for new clothes then change for the day. With the recent addition on my house, I hoped to find furniture to decorate. It was time to recruit someone to move to my island so I could improve my rating. A house needed to be relocated. I had to donate a fossil to the museum. And, it was time to sell all of my acquisitions to Nook’s Cranny for top dollar bell. You see, I’ve been striving to unlock the terra-forming app, which would allow me to reroute waterways and construct/destroy cliffs since I created my avatar on Animal Crossing New Horizons.

Just hangin’ in my virtual diner. How about that jukebox?

What virtual alternate reality am I living in, you might wonder. Animal Crossing is the genius Nintendo video invention that was first released in 2001. When my son turned eight, his efforts to convince his video game wary mother that it was imperative for him to get a Game Cube initially fell on indifferent ears. I poo-pooed his pleas for Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda. Then the boy told me about Animal Crossing, a sweet game of slow-paced tasks and fun interactions between my character and the humanlike animals. He showed me the sales pitch on the computer and insisted that even someone as old as me would love this game. He promised that if I bought him the gaming system, he would split it with me so I could delve into a world where the most stressful thought was whether I could pull a whale shark from the ocean or if I’d scare it away. Smart kid.

I became a devotee of Animal Crossing from the outset. Kicking back with a glass of wine, I loved doing relaxing chores that allowed me to earn currency to pay the mortgage on my ever-expanding home. I could decorate with a heart-themed bed and dresser or change it up with rustic furniture made from logs. Effortlessly, I could replace the yellow and white striped wall-covering to one with bold blue flowers or transform the concrete floor into pine hardwood. Under the guidance of my thumbs on the joystick controls, I could dig and plant a flourishing garden in under a minute. I installed apple orchards and orange trees. As game systems evolved, my son yearned for upgrades and leveraged his argument with promises of the next edition of Animal Crossing. From Nintendo DS to the Wii to the 3DS, I moved into ever-improving software developments. As with many hobbies and fads, though, real-life demanded I put down my controllers where they were soon forgotten.

Then Covid-19 surged, and as with the rest of the world, I went into quarantine. My husband, daughter, and I were locked down together with the same anxieties felt by all. To manage stress, some took up biking, hiking, or yoga. My husband took solace in landscaping our backyard. None of those felt relaxing to me, though, so what could give me a sense of peace in a chaotic world? I called my son to complain, seeing as my daughter and husband had heard the same rant four, five, or six times. He listened to me whining about the boredom, the stress, the anxiety. As I crossed the line from venting into rambling, he cut me off — “why don’t you get the Nintendo Switch so you can play Animal Crossing?” I took a second, ready to explain why nothing could possibly work, but then I realized…that was perfect. I’m an escapist. When stress overwhelms me, I don’t turn inward; I run away. This is why a fifth viewing of Bridesmaids, or my fiction writing, or Animal Crossing can always lift my spirits.

My beautiful garden. Almost as nice as hubby’s real one.

I set up my new island getaway, and my days became filled with transforming a wild, undeveloped territory into a bustling town. While my husband planted azaleas and hydrangeas in our backyard, I was busy doing the same for my virtual neighbors. As my daughter made us salads for lunch, I sold coconuts and pears at Nook’s Cranny. And, as my husband lay awake at night making a mental list of seeds and bulbs he needed to buy, the dirt he’d have to order for the raised garden, and scrolling through his phone to find a shrub to replace the one we’d lost, I was tossing and turning, too. He wasn’t the only one with a crazy schedule. 

My husband recently turned sixty and, given his newfound passion for horticulture, I invested in a greenhouse for his birthday gift. As I was carrying the boxes to the backyard, my daughter appeared in the doorway.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Your father’s new greenhouse,” I said, then, without a transition, immediately continued with the deluge of ideas cascading through my head. “I need to relocate Biff’s house today, and I’ve got to redo that walkway from yesterday. I’m not happy with it. Those red roses that I planted next to the white haven’t produced the hybrid pink yet. Also, if I don’t move the hydrangea—”

“What are you talking about? Is that real life or Animal Crossing?”

“Animal Crossing,” I said.

“Your reality,” my daughter said, “is no longer distinguishable from your imaginary world.”

“That’s how I keep sane!”

After another eight-hour day of landscaping, my husband rested in his recliner and complained about his painful shoulder. His hamstrings were in spasm from bending over the flower beds, and his back hurt from hoisting shovelfuls of dirt. As he struggled to his feet, creaking and groaning, he looked at me for sympathy.

“Don’t even try it, bucko,” I told him, setting down the video controller and doing some thumb exercises. “It’s been a hard day for me, too!”

…COVID-wineteen

/ jadorgan / 14 Comments

The hunt for quarantine wine

(This story was written while in quarantine for the COVID-19 pandemic. I have been blessed to have my daughter at home with me for the duration. Tara is a comedic writer with her undergraduate degree in the Psychology of Comedy. She has been a stand-up comedian and has written numerous plays and short stories with her particular slant toward absurdist comedy. This piece is a collaboration that we spent days toiling over, laughing about, and, of course, drinking wine as we worked. We hope you enjoy it.)

While others have spent their time hunting for cases of toilet paper and gathering bread-baking supplies, I’ve developed the survivalist strategy for my isolation essential. Wine. All-purpose flour? Yeast? How ‘bout a nice Chardonnay.

This panic buying, where people have irrationally decided what they suddenly can’t live without, has caused a complete disintegration of our social norms. Rushing into stores wild-eyed, stalking other shoppers to see what they’re buying, arms flailing as they grab everything remaining from the shelves. Do these folks not remember high school? The cool kids strolling with confidence across the campus on the lookout for signs of weakness? The bullies who relished throwing the outcast up against the lockers or, better yet, into the lockers? The mean girls who scoffed and sneered at the spaz and the dufus? People, calm down and stop looking ridiculous. I don’t want to have to kick your ass.

First, remember to lead by example. Face it. You reek of “uncool” if you race up and down aisles in search of Merlot. Others can smell fear, so never let them know how terrified you are that you may have to resort to Shiraz.

Second, plan ahead. Know your area stores and develop a spreadsheet of who works in each store, what their hours are, and the date you last shopped there. Spend hours on your makeup, cover it with a mask, then visit Bobby at ShopRite Liquors and Jake at Joe Canal’s. Go see Cal over at Bottle King and Sam at Wine Republic. Maintaining your supply of wine is crucial, but experts say safeguarding your mental health is just as important. If you’re stuck in isolation without regular doses of flattery, your state of mind is at risk which means you’ll drink more wine. You’ll feel better, sure, but there’s a fine line between self-medication and simply being wasteful.

Third, look into delivery services as well. My husband gave me a wine subscription gift for Christmas. I’m scheduled to receive six minuscule bottles (570 ML as opposed to the standard 750 ML) a month but, given their tiny size, that equates to what, maybe 1.5 regular bottles? Whatever the math, they’re a nice supplement to your in-person purchases. As I realized that we could be in quarantine for a long time, I started another subscription so I could get twelve bottles per month. But, on the second one, I gave the subscriber name as Docelyn Jorgan so the UPS guy wouldn’t know it was me.

And, fourth, you can increase your purchase amounts when necessary. I was on a lovely schedule of adhering to that 5 o’clock rule, counting down the minutes until I could pop the cork. But, one night as I watched time tick so slowly that I wondered if it was actually standing still, I had the impulse to break every single one of my clocks. That’ll teach them. The following morning, when I realized I wouldn’t know when 5 o’clock struck, I decided to play it safe and drink all day. Then I realized why brunch was invented. I could add a little sparkling white wine to my morning orange juice, and that entire 5 o’clock issue ended up in the trash. With my clocks.

Now that you know how to procure wines, you need to know their countless benefits. The thing I love to do most, after drinking wine, of course, is to eat. I would eat morning, noon, and night if I could. In quarantine, turns out I can. However, if there’s one thing I hate more than being sober, it’s exercise. You might think I should worry about the caloric content of wine. But it’s a fact that drinking wine causes your blood vessels to constrict. The more they constrict, the skinnier I look. So, wine consumption is actually a form of dieting. That’s science.

Some women have a signature perfume that, when they enter a room, their very scent causes heads to turn in recognition. The same holds true for wine. You need to develop your signature wine that becomes an extension of your identity. These days, when I enter a room, I no longer need to yell, “Pinot!” until somebody gives me a glass to stop the screaming. Now, a glass magically appears in my hand.

Wine is not just an accompaniment for all of your meals. Learn to use it generously in your dishes, too. For an appetizer, try a delicious Swiss fondue made with a bottle or so of high-quality dry Riesling. For your main course, I would suggest Swiss fondue made with a bottle or so of high-quality dry Riesling. For dessert, you can try cupcakes with a light champagne frosting or, if you prefer, a Swiss fondue made with a bottle or so of high-quality dry Riesling.

To look at me, you might not guess that I’m a highly accomplished rhymer. Whenever my friends or family need a good rhyme, they call me. I’m going to leave you with a little ditty that I’m particularly proud of.

When you confine, don’t forget the wine.

I like to wine and dine. My husband likes to dine and whine.

Stop giving the wine to a porcupine.

You better stop, the wine is mine.

Spine.

Decline.

Panty-line.